I confess, I’m not a fan — I consider him among the worst of the big name science popularizers, and every time I listen to him I’m either more confused or irritated. I also find his forays into biology generally ignorant and wrong, and he seems to be most popular among lay people who consider him an apologist for god. For example, here’s this wanker who claims Kaku has found definitive proof that god exists.

The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku claims to have developed a theory that might point to the existence of God. The information has created a great stir in the scientific community because Kaku is considered one of the most important scientists of our times, one of the creators and developers of the revolutionary String Theory which is highly respected throughout the world.

To to come to his conclusions, the physicist made ​​use of what he calls “primitive semi – radius tachyons “.

Tachyons are theoretical particles capable to “unstick ” the Universe matter or vacuum space between matter particles, leaving everything free from the influences of the surrounding universe.

After conducting the tests, Kaku came to the conclusion that we live in a “Matrix”.

They include this video of Kaku in which, I note, he does not provide proof of god, does not claim to have a proof, and most of that garbled stuff above doesn’t appear (although, as quoted here, he does make claims of concluding that the universe was created by an intelligence). Instead, this video is mostly about the interplay between physics and mathematics.

It does conclude with some gibberish.

But you see, all this is pure mathematics and so the final resolution could be that God is a mathematician. And when you read the mind of God, we actually have a candidate for the mind of God. The mind of God we believe is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.

I think he’s transcended pure mathematics to reach a plane of pure bullshit.

But Kaku seems to be ubiquitous, despite shoveling a heck of a lot of noise, and the happy Christian quoting him claims he’s one of the most important scientists of our times. I don’t get it. I see someone who is more Deepak Chopra than Stephen Hawking. But I could be wrong — anyone care to enlighten me on the source of this guy’s popular authority?

As expected, Thunderf00t has a new video crowing about the failure of the Reason Rally. But I’ve been reading the stuff put out by people who attended.

Trav Mamone thought it was great.

Matt Facciani had a grand time.

Adam Lee got a charge out of it.

Some guy named Ed Brayton made a series of videos about it.

I’m beginning to wish I’d gone — everyone is making the point that the reason for the Reason Rally was more than just making a big mob scene, but getting together as a community for a day. That sounds like a success to me.

As for the haters, Adam Lee has a smart comment on that.

The usual sneering bigots asserted that the rally’s anti-harassment policy must have kept people away, a claim with the same plausibility as a Bible-thumper blaming gay rights for earthquakes.

Since we’ve got one of those keep your social justice outta my atheism types babbling in the comments here, I thought I’d point out that Deacon Duncan has a good response to those kinds of conservatives.

We atheists are supposed to stay focused, stay on message, but the only message they’ll tolerate is that god doesn’t exist and religion is bad, with no thought about why or the implications. It makes for a rather boring and repetitive message, and lacking in introspection.

How strange…I’m hearing from so many people ranting and raving about how the Reason Rally was a failure, but they’re all people who weren’t there; at the same time, I’m seeing a lot of enthusiastic appreciation from attendees. This wouldn’t be at all odd if it were Christians and Fox News trying to dismiss it, but there’s also a cadre of the usual dedicated anti-SJW atheists also triumphantly declaring the defeat of the Reason Rally.

Here’s the deal: it was a mixed success. It sounds like it was a good event, and the people who went there got what they wanted out of it, but it also had lower attendance than had been hoped for. The accounts I’m seeing suggest that it fell somewhat short of the attendance at the first one, although it was still a healthy turnout.

So what reduced the number of attendees?

Obviously, it’s because I wasn’t invited to speak at this one.

Wait, no, that’s not it. With such a mob of speakers, I’ll be the first to admit I’d be a fairly low-wattage draw.

I’m going to pin the problems on organization and focus. Personally, I didn’t go because the early organization was very frankly a mess — way back in January I was complaining about the slow start and the small number of speakers at that time…and if you’re trying to get large numbers of people to commit to the expense and time of travel, you’ve got to get them enthused early. I just couldn’t. And by the time they got their act together, it was too late for me to make arrangements.

This is fixable. Next time, get a solid core of speakers committed well in advance. Don’t dribble out announcements slowly, over months.

The other problem is focus. This is an atheist event, but a lot of the noise being made ahead of time was about Big Name Celebrities agreeing to speak there, like Johnny Depp and Margaret Cho. That’s nice for getting a blurb in the newspaper, but they have no reputation as atheists, and haven’t spoken much about godlessness, so they were no draw at all to me (although I might have been pleasantly surprised by their talks, if they hadn’t cancelled, which is a whole ‘nother problem). It needed atheists qua atheists, not random celebrities who happen to not believe in gods. If I want to listen to someone talk about atheism, Greta Christina is more of a celebrity than Johnny Depp.

This is also fixable. Start with a solid roster of known atheist speakers first, sign ’em up early (they’re easy, they’ll be enthusiastic for the cause), and then try and get those popular but largely irrelevant celebrities.

So sorry, naysayers. It wasn’t a failure, but there’s room for improvement.

With a few exceptions — Aron Ra is good, so is Steve Shives, and every once in a while some youtuber shows some sign of awareness of what a swirling cesspool they’re swimming in and posts some solid mockery of the MRA/Atheist/YouTube axis, like this guy:

You can watch it, sort of, right here:

There’s a lot of stutter and lag in that feed, but you can get the gist. You can also follow #ReasonRally on Twitter. From the shots of the crowd, it looks to be comparable in size to the 2012 Reason Rally — so it’s good, but isn’t showing a lot of growth. It’s also not raining! I hear it’s hot and muggy, though.

I have very mixed feelings about it. I want this event to succeed, but I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm for the movement in general — there are just too many asshats within atheism, and rather than disavowing them, the movement seems determined to try and take a middle road, appeasing the people who treat women as subhuman, being reluctant to embrace social justice as the significant contribution atheism can make to society, and regarding minorities as people who should be absorbed into current atheist goals, rather than transforming them. But I’m hoping it will grow and evolve.

Meanwhile, those same asshats are praying for the Reason Rally to fail. You want to see a raging failure to evaluate evidence? Look here.

FYI, this picture isnt a 'photoshopped' thats the liveview! https://t.co/BlS0SW7Db9 pic.twitter.com/srzlyQizTA

— thunderf00t (@thunderf00t) June 4, 2016

That’s so dishonest it hurts to see it. No one expected 400,000 people to show up for this event; estimates were in the range of 10K+. So right away it’s an invalid comparison. And then, that’s not a photo of the Reason Rally in progress on the right. If you look at the youtube videos, there actually are quite a few people there, and that photo makes it look as if no one is there at all.

Dave Futrelle has a tag for MRAs trying to make memes. Maybe I should do something similar, because atheists are also sending me inane, nonsensical memes. Like this one.

There’s so much wrong with that.

[Read more…]

I read this article, Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris are old news — a totally different Atheism is on the rise, with considerable disbelief.

More and more, the strongest atheist voices are talking about nonbelief less as an end in itself, but as part of a larger conversation about social justice. It could hardly be any other way: atheism is growing not only in numbers, but in diversity. When Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens were at their most prominent, a frequent (and credible) criticism was that the faces of atheism were all white, male and affluent. To make the same claim now is to deliberately ignore some of the most vital atheist and skeptic voices that have emerged in the last 10 years.

I wish.

It’s what I want to happen, and maybe I just have a distorted perspective, but when I look at my email and see the hate pouring in, all from atheists who are deeply resentful of women and minorities, and somehow blame me for letting them in (which is twisted enough as it is — these people are so far gone that they can’t imagine this situation occurring without an old white guy being responsible), and I don’t see what change this author is seeing. The same white, male, affluent (or white, male, not-rich-enough-and-hating it) faces are still here, still dominating the conversation, still smugly confident that they are right and in control, still flooding any women or minorities with concentrated bile.

I’m disillusioned. I’m not seeing any substantial improvement at all. And as just another old white guy, there’s not a damned thing I can do about it without getting all the blame/credit from the same old bigots.

Suddenly, my Twitter mentions and email are full of the usual assholes who have found a new bone to chew on. It seems the gamergaters and anti-feminists and alt-right twits have discovered that Sincere Kirabo is the Social Justice Coordinator at the American Humanist Association, and they are freaking out about “Humanism+” and how it must be destroyed. In addition, they’re ranting at me because, in their little minds, I must be behind it all, or am about to step in and take over humanism.

I know this will not matter to people so out of touch with reality, but I’m going to explain it slowly and carefully.

This is nothing new. Humanism has always been concerned with morality and ethics. Social justice is something that has always been a major focus. The American Humanist Association has merely launched new initiatives to specifically pursue social justice for black, LGBTQ, and feminist humanists. If this is surprising to you, well, we already knew you were a bunch of ignorant, regressive loons. This is precisely within the purview of humanism, and always has been, and it would only be unusual if a humanist organization rejected the idea of social justice.

Also, thank you for thinking I must be the mastermind behind a social justice initiative — that’s the kind of reputation I would like to have. However, I have had absolutely nothing to do with this program at AHA, and have no expectation of ever being asked to contribute to it. As for all the kooks calling it Humanism+ pejoratively and comparing it to Atheism+, I had nothing to do with the establishment and support of Atheism+, either, although I do think it was a great idea and that it was unfortunate that it was harassed into hibernation by you jerks.

It was a great idea, and it’s still a great idea — to attempt to make it clear that not all atheists were horrible, awful, rotten people. What seems to be a bad idea is the ongoing effort to make it clear that atheism is the domain of horrible, awful, rotten people, and drive all those who despise reactionary bigotry into the arms of humanism.

At least I like humanism. If you think you can remake it in the nature of YouTube atheism, I don’t think you’re going to succeed.